A Picture of Murder

by T E Kinsey

  She was awake when I entered the bedroom, but only barely.

  ‘Good morning, my lady,’ I said. ‘I bring tea.’

  ‘Florence of the family Armstrong, you’re a lifesaver. Tea-bringer and harbinger of the glorious new day.’

  ‘Not so sure about the “glorious” part today, I’m afraid. We’ve made the paper.’

  ‘The Times? How glamorous.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The Bristol News. It doesn’t paint a flattering picture of the village.’

  ‘It’s only to be expected. We do seem to be host to three dead entertainers.’

  ‘She saves some of her more imaginative invective for you.’

  ‘She? Oh, the Caudle woman. That’s only to be expected, too. I didn’t much take to her and I don’t suppose she was greatly impressed by me.’

  ‘Well, we know where she’s staying if you want her to suffer a little . . . accident,’ I said.

  ‘You can be quite scary at times,’ she said. ‘I’m glad you’re on my side.’

  ‘Always,’ I said, and turned to leave. ‘Breakfast is in about half an hour.’

  ‘I shall endeavour to bestir myself. Thank you for the tea.’

  Back downstairs, I was surprised to find that both Zelda and Mr Cheetham were already in the morning room.

  ‘Good morning, Miss Armstrong,’ said Mr Cheetham. ‘Is this tea fresh, do you know?’ He indicated the teapot on the table.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ I said. ‘And madam.’ I smiled at Zelda. ‘It was made within the last ten minutes, I should say.’

  ‘Grand,’ he said.

  ‘Would you like me to pour you a cup?’

  ‘Thank you, no. We can manage.’

  ‘As you wish,’ I said. ‘Miss Jones is making breakfast. I’m afraid we weren’t expecting everyone to be up quite this early so it’ll be at least another half an hour.’

  ‘Sounds like perfect timing to me,’ he said. ‘Gives us time to have a brew and read the paper.’

  ‘Don’t take it too much to heart,’ I said.

  He looked puzzled. I indicated the front page of the Bristol News.

  ‘Oh, that,’ he said, picking up the newspaper. ‘Water off a duck’s back, chuck. I’ve been called worse than . . . “A blasphemous peddler of corrupting filth” in my time. You should have seen the reviews of our production of Romeo and Juliet. And d’you remember that time we were chased out of that theatre in Hull, Zel? What was that?’

  ‘The Heart of the Troubadour,’ said Zelda.

  ‘Aye, that’s right,’ he said with a chuckle. ‘Basil’s pet project. He was a fine character actor, but it turned out he was a dreadful playwright.’

  Zelda smiled fondly at the memory of her friend.

  ‘I’ll be in the kitchen if you need anything,’ I said. ‘I’m afraid we never got round to installing bells, but a shout or a whistle usually does the trick.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll be fine, dear,’ said Zelda.

  I left them to it.

  After breakfast, Lady Hardcastle retreated to her study with the stated intention of ‘catching up with correspondence’, though I suspected she would actually be engaged in some solitary pondering. With three dead and no firm idea who was responsible, she was certain to be feeling more than a little frustrated.

  My own immediate concerns were altogether more prosaic: I had some mending to do. I was preparing to settle in the kitchen and catch up on gossip with Edna over a cup of tea and some darning when the doorbell rang.

  ‘Morning, Miss Armstrong,’ said Inspector Sunderland, for it was he.

  ‘And good morning to you, too, Inspector,’ I said. ‘Please come in.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, and handed me his hat.

  ‘Make yourself comfortable in the drawing room and I’ll tell Lady Hardcastle you’re here.’

  ‘Is her “crime board” still in the dining room?’ he asked.

  ‘It is, yes. I haven’t the energy to keep moving it about so we leave it in there with a dust sheet over it. I like to pretend it’s an abstract sculpture.’

  ‘In that case, might I be impertinent enough to ask to meet her in the dining room? I feel the presence of her sketch-strewn blackboard might help.’

  ‘Certainly, Inspector. I’ll bring tea, too. We were just about to have a pot.’

  I showed him to the dining room and then alerted Lady Hardcastle to his presence on my way to the kitchen. By the time I returned with the tray, they were both seated at the dining table, engaged in small talk. The crime board was uncovered.

  The board had changed a great deal since we had first started to investigate. Two of the potential suspects, Euphemia Selwood and Aaron Orum, had been pinned next to Basil Newhouse under ‘Deceased’. The note under Dinah Caudle’s sketch, indicating her flirtatious link to Aaron Orum had been double-underlined. Clearly, they thought there was something significant there, though I thought her genuine distress at Orum’s death spoke in her favour somewhat.

  The Hugheses, too, were now double-underlined, with a new note saying, ‘No one taking them seriously enough?’

  We had always had to be circumspect about leaving notes concerning the film folk – it doesn’t do to openly suspect one’s houseguests of murder, after all – but I could tell from the many fingerprints in the chalk dust under the sketches of both Nolan Cheetham and Zelda Drayton that they had been much discussed.

  The conversation now, though, had clearly moved on.

  ‘The inspector tells me that he and Mrs Sunderland will be singing together at the cathedral next week,’ said Lady Hardcastle.

  ‘As part of a choir, I hasten to add,’ he said.

  ‘May we come? We’d love to see you under less investigatory circumstances, wouldn’t we, Flo?’

  ‘If you don’t mind,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sure I should be most honoured,’ he said. ‘And Mrs Sunderland would love to meet you. She’s always on at me to invite you to dine with us, as you know.’

  ‘And yet you never do anything about it. We still haven’t met the woman who manages to put up with you with such patient indulgence,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Perhaps we could take you for a bite afterwards?’

  ‘I shall pass on your invitation, my lady. Thank you.’

  ‘Splendid,’ she said. ‘And now that Flo’s here, I feel we should proceed to business. I couldn’t help noticing that as you came in, Inspector dear, you looked “all of a pother”, as Sergeant Dobson might say. Is there something the matter?’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ said the inspector as he stirred his tea. ‘I thought I’d managed to put it behind me as I drove up here. But you’re right. I have been pothered to perdition.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said. ‘Whatever is it?’

  ‘The new mortuary has burned down,’ he said.

  ‘Good heavens. Was anyone hurt?’

  ‘Thankfully the only people inside were beyond further injury. Which is lucky, because they were all fed into the incinerator before the blackguards opened up the gas pipes and set the place ablaze.’

  ‘Oh, I say. Who would burn a mortuary?’

  ‘There are some strange people about,’ said the inspector wearily. ‘It’s set us back, though. Dr Gosling hadn’t yet started on his autopsies and all three of our bodies were in the store.’

  ‘Do you think it’s related to our case?’ I asked.

  ‘I’d say it’s related to a case,’ he said. ‘We had several bodies there for examination in relation to murder cases. I wouldn’t put it past some of the city’s more imaginative villains to get rid of incriminating evidence that way. One of the corpses had formerly made his living as muscle for one of the gangs trying to control the area down by the new tobacco warehouses. Ordinarily these things are done “publicly” as a show of strength, but there was something shady about this one. I’m beginning to wonder if the corpse might have had secrets to reveal.’

  ‘And it doesn’t now,’ I said.

  ‘Quite. But nor d
o any of the others. It’s most frustrating.’

  ‘Can you even secure a conviction for murder with no bodies?’

  ‘We should be fine in this case,’ he said. ‘We have plenty of reliable witnesses who saw Mr Newhouse, Miss Selwood, and Mr Orum dead. It does complicate matters, though.’

  ‘Simeon must be beside himself. He’s not been in the job more than a few weeks and his office has been burned down.’

  ‘He’s not best pleased. He’d been looking forward to showing off for you, I think, my lady.’

  ‘The poor dear.’

  ‘He’ll be joining me here later,’ he said. ‘You can pass on your commiserations in person.’

  ‘I shall rag him mercilessly, of course. But poor you as well. What will you do now?’

  ‘I’ll carry on as normal,’ he said. ‘I’ve actually come up to speak to the Bristol News’s “Society Correspondent” about her piece in today’s newspaper, but I thought I’d pass on the mortuary news on my way.’

  ‘And cadge a cup of tea,’ I said.

  ‘It’s part of our training. The entire police force is fuelled by tea and we’re taught how to seek out the best in every town.’

  ‘I’m honoured that we’re considered the source of the finest tea,’ said Lady Hardcastle. ‘Would you like us to do anything else? We can accompany you to the Dog and Duck, if that would help.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, ‘but in this instance I think I might do better without you. To judge from the way she writes about you, she’s not one of your greatest admirers.’

  ‘I fear you may be right. I’m not sure what I’ve done to upset her, but she definitely seems to have taken against me. Would we be interfering if we were to look around the churchyard? Sergeant Dobson barred the way last night but I’m really rather keen to examine the scene for myself.’

  ‘Not at all, my lady. I know I can rely on you two not to damage any evidence. I shall be over there myself presently, but it never hurts to have another couple of pairs of eyes.’

  ‘Splendid,’ she said. ‘Then that’s our morning sorted out. Does that suit you, Flo?’

  ‘Of course, my lady,’ I said. ‘I’ll fetch our coats.’

  ‘Thank you, dear. I’ll pop out to the orangery to get my sketch pad.’

  Chapter Thirteen

  It was another bright, crisp autumn day in Littleton Cotterell. There was a light frost on the green and we left footprints as we walked across it to the church. Despite the terrible events of the past few days, village life carried on as usual. Shops were open and people were going about their business as though the murders of three strangers were an everyday occurrence. Sadly, in Littleton Cotterell it actually was an everyday occurrence.

  The lych gate was shut and there were no disturbances in the frost. No one had been to the churchyard since the frost had formed. We followed the path around the west end of the building to the churchyard.

  There was nothing to mark the point at the base of the tower where Aaron Orum had met his premature end. Almost as one, we looked up at the parapet of the tower and tried to track the path his terrified body would have taken.

  ‘He must have landed here,’ said Lady Hardcastle, waving in the general direction of the grass beside the path. ‘Not much to show for a life lost.’

  She was right. The ground had been disturbed by many boots since the tragedy and it was apparent that something had happened there, but there was no specific indication as to what. I’m not sure that I expected to see the imprint of his body in the ground, but it seemed wrong, somehow, that there was nothing more to mark the sudden snuffing out of a man’s life.

  ‘It’s a good thing we don’t need to fathom out what happened last night based on the footprints,’ I said. ‘This is a mess.’

  ‘It is rather, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘A few pairs of government-issue boots can create a bewildering muddle just by going about their business. Still, it tells a tale of its own. I shall make a few sketches so that we can ponder the scene at our leisure.’

  ‘Have you ever thought about simply taking photographs?’ I said.

  ‘I have, as a matter of fact. But I got myself tangled up in a philosophical argument about the difference between what I see and what’s actually there.’

  ‘And they’re different?’ I asked.

  ‘Quite different, don’t you think? A sketch is an interpretation of what I see but a photograph is no more than a chemical record of the light reflected from the scene. For reasons I can’t explain, I prefer to record my impressions.’

  ‘You could form your impressions at any time from a well-taken photograph,’ I said. ‘And your first impressions might miss a crucial detail.’

  ‘Yes, I argued those points, too. But no matter how many times I went back and forth, I never managed to get away from the fact that I really rather enjoy making sketches.’

  ‘I wasn’t trying to stop you,’ I said. ‘Just offering a more modern alternative.’

  ‘And I appreciate the thought,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Would you like me to leave you in peace?’

  ‘I’m always delighted to have your company, but I do understand it must be frightfully dull watching a woman sketching a murder scene. If you wish to wander, I shall be fine on my own for a while.’

  ‘I might explore the churchyard if I become too bored.’

  ‘Please do,’ she said as she began the mystical, magical work of rendering an image of the scene using only pencil and paper. Absently, she said, ‘It’s a terrible thing when anyone dies, but I confess to being especially disappointed that it was Orum.’

  ‘He was definitely my front runner in the Top Suspect Stakes,’ I said. ‘His death rather inconveniently opens the field again.’

  ‘Doesn’t it just?’ she said. ‘On the other hand, we’re in the old familiar position when it comes to multiple murders.’

  ‘We could just sit tight and wait?’ I suggested. ‘Whoever’s left standing at the end must be the killer.’

  ‘Quite so. It’s a gruesome way of going about things, but it involves much less effort than actually trying to figure it out.’

  ‘Whom do you favour now?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, there’s Nolan Cheetham,’ she said.

  ‘That would be very boring. With Orum gone and only Zelda left alive from the troupe, he’s the only one familiar enough with the plot of the moving picture to want to mimic the murder methods so closely.’

  ‘Yes, that would be very mundane, wouldn’t it? Not to mention rather foolish in the long term. Morbid fascination might make his picture a success, but he’d not be able to repeat that success if he’d killed off all his stars.’

  ‘You once told me never to underestimate the murderer’s capacity for foolishness,’ I said.

  ‘Did I? How very wise of me. Brava, Emily. But foolish or not, it seems altogether far too desperate.’

  ‘Agreed. Zelda, then?’

  ‘There’s no reason she couldn’t have killed all three,’ she said. ‘It would be getting trickier by the day to keep her activities hidden, though. Cheetham would know by now.’

  ‘And she’d have even less reason to murder her friends for the sake of a modicum of notoriety.’

  ‘Well, quite. Notoriety . . . notoriety . . . What about the Caudle woman? Lord knows it’s hard enough for a woman to be taken seriously at anything. But here she is with her story on the front page of the Bristol News.’

  ‘Do you think she’d kill three people just to get her story on the front page?’ I said.

  ‘I’ve quite taken against the woman,’ she said. ‘I could easily be persuaded that she would kill three people just to get a decent cup of tea.’

  I laughed. ‘And we still haven’t ruled out the Hugheses,’ I said.

  ‘The Righteous Hugheses, yes. But we don’t know anything about them.’

  ‘We don’t,’ I agreed. ‘But how would three murders benefit them?’

  ‘By reinforcing their cl
aim that Cheetham’s moving picture is a corrupting influence. You saw the quotes in the newspaper.’ She flipped open her notebook. ‘“Someone has been turned into a vicious murderer as a result of watching that vile piece of so-called entertainment”,’ she read. ‘“An otherwise decent person has been turned from the light and on to the path of wickedness and damnation by these flickering shadows from Hell itself.” It’s attention-grabbing stuff, but only once there have been murders.’

  ‘So why wait for someone to be corrupted when it’s easy enough to do the killing yourself? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘We’ve seen less rational reasons for murder.’

  ‘True,’ I said. ‘You know, I was wrong about the whole troupe being killed off.’

  ‘You were?’

  ‘Yes. What about the chap who played George?’

  ‘George?’ she said, trying to place him. ‘Oh, the chap in the village who was sweet on the beautiful girl? The one who went mad and threw himself . . .’ She looked around at the muddy churchyard.

  ‘Yes, him. Why isn’t he on this publicity tour? Perhaps he’s enraged at being left out so he’s killing off the cast one by one.’

  ‘But why Orum?’ she said.

  ‘An old grudge,’ I said confidently. ‘They must have had a falling out in the past.’

  She looked up from her sketch and smiled. ‘Well, I’m always the one who says we shouldn’t rule anything out until we have all the facts,’ she said. ‘And it’s as likely as anything else at the moment.’

  ‘It could be Lady Farley-Stroud trying to drum up business for the travelling picture show.’

  ‘Now I know you’re bored,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘Run along and play. I’ll not be long.’

  I went for a wander around the churchyard.

  In the daylight, I saw that the churchyard was a good deal larger than I had thought. From the ancient rowan tree where we had found Basil Newhouse on Wednesday, I had only been able to make out a few headstones and memorials in the pre-dawn gloom. But here in the autumn sunshine I could see a great deal more.

  The graves, of which there were many, were neat and well tended. The older headstones were darkened with lichen, and some of them leaned haphazardly as though bumped by a clumsy giant. There was no wall, but the churchyard boundary was marked by a hedgerow and more trees, most of which seemed at least as old as the ‘ancient rowan’ but which I, as always, was unable to identify. A weathered old cart stood beside a gap in the hedge, which provided an entrance of sorts. The cart was piled high with hay, which seemed odd until I noticed that there was a donkey tethered within reach, helping herself to the feast. I was contemplating the oddness of there being a donkey in a churchyard when I was hailed.